Down payments and closing costs on the homes will be subsidized through the city’s Head Start to HOME ownership program, which uses federal dollars.

Community development corporations use lots of funding sources — government, charitable foundations and private — to meet neighborhoods’ affordable housing and economic development needs.

After starting with houses, the Northwest Jax CDC built the North Point Town Center strip mall five years ago at the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Moncrief Road. The CDC’s headquarters are upstairs in the mall.

“People said, ‘OK, that’s great you’re building housing, but what about jobs? We need jobs,' ” said Northwest Jax CDC Chief Operating Officer Dara Davis. She said people are starting to take pride in the neighborhood again. They recently dubbed this area "The District of Soul."

LISC Jacksonville Executive Director Janet Owens says her organization is often working "behind the scenes" of neighborhood revitalization.

“We want to be named and known for our heritage and history instead of some of the negative connotations that are out there,” she said. “So when you hear District of Soul, know that you’re talking about the Northwest quadrant of Jacksonville.”

Economic decline hit hard here after the city and county consolidated services in the late 1960s and the middle class fled to the suburbs.

One Jacksonville native, Bishop E.M. Johnson, watched the effects of poverty firsthand and decided to do something about it as head of another CDC called Grace and Truth. His church and the CDC office are off Norwood Avenue.

“We said, ‘What’s the greatest need besides spiritual help? The next-greatest need is housing, a place to lay your head,' ” he recalled.

Grace and Truth has helped 80 families buy or rehab homes in the area called North Brookside.

An architect's rendering shows plans for an expanded shopping district at the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Moncreif Road.

Credit Jessica Palombo / WJCT

“And a lot of them are first-generation homebuyers,” Johnson says. “Mama didn’t have a home. Mama before mama didn’t have a home. So here I am, four generations down the road, and finally we have a home. And that, to me, means so, so much.”

But affordable-housing nonprofits are all competing for the same scarce funding.

Shannon Nazworth heads up another CDC called Ability Housing, which specializes in helping people with disabilities.

Grace and Truth CDC plans to convert the old Norwood School into a senior housing development.

Credit Jessica Palombo / WJCT

“Because the HUD budget has been cut and because the population has grown and the inventory of affordable housing has not remotely kept pace, we just need more federal resources targeted to providing affordable housing,” she said.

LISC helps CDCs attract developers by securing funding through a national lending pool. Lowering the risk for developers gets things built in areas where the private market doesn’t want to invest, she said.

“Our goal is to make neighborhoods places where anyone coming into the Jacksonville community would want to live,” she said.

And she believes Jacksonville is luckier than many cities. The local housing authority is one of the best in the South, she said, and it manages 10,000 units of public housing that are maintained better than most.

Michelle Corum contributed reporting for this story.

Funding for Chasing the Dream is provided by the JPB Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

The deplorable conditions at the local low-income housing project Eureka Gardens captured national headlines when it came to light residents were living with dangerous mold, leaky gas pipes, and dilapidated stairs. But those conditions aren’t unique to that complex.

Many local, low-income residents deal with these conditions every day.

For poor people in Jacksonville, finding housing that’s both affordable and livable can be hard to come by. Finding shelter often means settling for dangerously run-down apartments and dealing with the constant threat of eviction.

WJCT’s "Chasing the Dream" series, launching this week on 89.9 FM, examines what housing is available when you’re poor and what’s being done to help against a public housing system that’s underfunded nationwide.

We discuss the issue with WJCT News Director Jessica Palombo, and attorneys Katherine Hanson and Jeff Haynie of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid.